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[Untitled]
Ducks in a daze with mourning doves—
Sweetness of the hay fresh mown, the clouds
Slowly stacking, the constant
Revectoring of flocks among weeds,
A dampness to northern aspects of fields
Slanting toward the river, workmen
Silent, workwomen finding shade, what remains
Of harvest not mattering as one thing bears down
Upon the other—some wind in ornamental trees,
The waxy mane of the whitest mare, whitest
From the oncoming weather-light, the foal
That does not shy from the hand that gelded it.
"Goodan's poems search for the holy in the ordinary. . . . His poems risk the big questions: the nature of death and nature of life. . . . The musicality of his language resonates with intelligence and intensity. . . . These poems are filled with a wintry light, a light that is at once cold and harsh but transcendent in its clarity. A necessary second volume; highly recommended for contemporary poetry collections."—Library Journal
"Granted, delightedly, its Keatsian pressures, compressions and urgency, Kevin Goodan's Winter Tenor is no 'cold pastoral.' No indeed; these poems choir a warm sound from the barest branches and stir the embers of dark flames ablaze. Here is the soul of heat driven straight through the roots and veins of this old world."—Donald Revell
"...a series of evocative meditations on what it is to live close to the earth, with wonder and humility, amidst the violent practicalities of farm life... Goodan sees the self in nature and vice versa."—The Kenyon Review Online
"We readers are lucky when we encounter a voice that speaks as if it were speaking to each of us alone, an impossible and therefore necessary illusion, a miracle of multiple visions, essential in a commonplace way only what's divine can determine—this describes Winter Tenor's quintessential and most valuable presence. I love reading this book."—Dara Wier
"In a series of untitled, haiku-spare poems, Kevin Goodan's second collection Winter Tenor reads like an ode to nature...considering the appearance, the experience, from different angles."—Gently Read Literature
"These poems accept and meld the cruel and the consecrated in equal measures…For all that, the poems feel redemptive: celebratory, incantatory, rich…Winter Tenor brings us an intimate, ecstatic voice, presents religious under– and overtones, extends and augments earlier themes—and is, in sum, a good model for a second book.”—The Georgia Review
“The taut, untitled poems of Winter Tenor, Goodan’s gorgeous second collection, turn west at Brooklyn and drive thousands of miles deep into the wilderness of isolated human experience. Goodan’s language is both sparklingly particular and enchantingly repetitive…invigorated by meticulous, even primal attention to the natural world that offers ecstasies as well as heartbreak.””—Contrary Magazine
Kevin Goodan's first book, In the Ghost-House Acquainted (Alice James Books) won the 2005 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares and American Poet, among others, and he has taught Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut, and Wesleyan University. He resides on a small farm in western Massachusetts.